The article starts
from the premiss that the young man in question - whatever his subsequent symbolical value
- was a historical person. It notes the proximity of his association with Jesus implied by
the evangelists usage. It comments on the fact that in the sources for the Passion
there is only one figure besides Jesus who was the object of a projected arrest by the
authorities and one figure besides Jesus on whom an arrest is known to have been actually
attempted. Suggesting that the historian dealing with secular sources would be prompted to
consider an identification accordingly, the article examines the implications.

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14,51-52, it would have been necessary to preserve discretion in the immediate context
of the writing of his Gospel may be doubted, but the consideration is not decisive.
Discretion might still have been advisable if the Gospel was written before the fall of
Jerusalem and there was a supposition that it might circulate there. To adapt an
observation of Best "that those who are on the run do not write
Gospels" 20, one
may surmise that those "on the run" do not get written about in Gospels. It is
just possible too that, if the tradition by which the detail was transmitted to Mark had
suppressed the name of the young man, the identification might have been lost by the time
that the evangelist received the story.

A second and quite different problem
concerns the young mans garb. Saunderson, in a detailed examination of the possible
interpretations, allows for the possibility that the garb may not have been quite so
startling as the text implies. The young man, it is speculated, might have been wearing a xitwn (though why the evangelist should not
have used that term is unclear). "The lowest temperature that night, assuming
temperatures not to have changed unduly since then, would have been above 52oF/11oC,
and he would have been well insulated by the folds of his double garment" 21. In point of fact, we
do know that somewhat later the night was cool enough for Peter, fully dressed, to need to
warm himself at a fire (Mark 14,66; John 18,18)  in what might be imagined somewhat
perilous circumstances, especially if there were thought to be a direct threat to others
of the movement. Certainly, that a well-off man (such as Lazarus clearly was), who cannot
be thought to have arrived on the scene impromptu, should within any conventional
interpretation have been so sparely dressed as to attract the notice preserved in
Marks account must be excluded. In Lazarus case the form of dress described
would have to be frankly acknowledged as extremely remarkable. It would also have a very
particular resonance.

The word neutrally rendered as "linen
cloth", which alone, if the text is literally understood, the young man wore over his
body, is the same, sindwn, as
that by which at a proximate juncture Mark will describe the body of Jesus as wrapped for
burial. (Mark 15,46). It is therefore open to interpretation, perhaps even strongly
suggested by the proximate recurrence of the word, that the young man was naked except for
being wrapped in what might, in Marks terminology 22, be used to wrap a corpse. That the sindwn should be grave-clothing which had
actually been used must be excluded on grounds of the associated ritual impurity. The wrap
might be